Chinese Herbal Medicine: Materia Medica (Bensky, Clavey, Stoger)

Chinese Herbal Medicine: Materia Medica, now in its third edition, is the standard English language reference used in professional Chinese medicine training programs across North America and widely cited in clinical and academic literature on herbal medicine. Its track record is one of successive revision against both classical Chinese sources and modern pharmacological and clinical research, with each edition correcting identifications and adding safety findings rather than simply repeating the last. It is not independent verification that a given traditional use is medically effective, and it does not claim to be, it records what a substance has been used for within Chinese medical practice and theory, tracing that use to named classical texts where one exists. That is exactly the narrow claim cited here, the traditional ailment a plant is associated with, not a claim about clinical outcome. For a question of Chinese medicine's own historical and clinical record of use, rather than of controlled trial evidence, this is the appropriate and standard reference, and it is not cited here for anything beyond that record.